Counting down 10 – Nantucket Sleighride

A busy week poring over maps, trying to get Google maps to lay down a route with more way points than it will physically handle now is a bit of a problem, however there are other products and these are being looked into. Miami and Florida will be a whistle-stop day’s run as we head up to Georgia for day 2. Charleston in South Carolina is an overnight stop before heading towards the Outer Banks via Jacksonville. Once back on the mainland its decision time as we head northwards. Which route is the current dilemma. Swing inland to Richmond and up skirting round Washington DC or stay nearer the coast and head up via Baltimore which misses out DC altogether. As we’ve already seen the Capitol there’s no plans to visit it again this time but Philadelphia and New Jersey are both new to us to drive through so we’ll see which wins on the day depending on how things are going. Heading into New York State one way or another it’s a visit to Bethel and a look at where Woodstock happened and the performing arts centre that now lives nearby. We plan to be around 7 to 8 days into the trip by this point and it’s time to head North and East towards Vermont and New Hampshire before Maine and finally Massachusetts before it’s time to go home again. Vermont has a magnetic draw that Oregon has for me, not been there yet but it seems like a very attractive sort of place with craft beer, good food, the great outdoors and general closeness to Boston and NYC as and when needed. This trip includes some if not all the oldest settled and built parts that the US has to offer, nothing over 200 years old but it’s not called New England without a reason. I’m still not sure about visiting Nantucket, but Nantucket Sleigh-ride is on the playlist for when we get close….it won’t be snowing though surely.?A Nantucket sleigh ride was a whaling term for the moment when a whale realising it had been harpooned tried to out run and escape the whaling boats that were now attached by lines, basically the whale dived and tried to lose the lines that attach to the harpoons, it pulled the boats uncontrollably behind